Romero on the Poor and the Body of Christ

"Real persecution has been directed against the poor, the body of Christ in history today. They, like Jesus, are the crucified, the persecuted servant of Yahweh. They are the ones who make up in their own bodies that which is lacking in the passion of Christ. And for that reason when the church has organized itself around the hopes and the anxieties of the poor, it has incurred the same fate as that of Jesus and of the poor: persecution."- from The Political Dimension of the Faith from the Perspective of the Poor

This theology is an interesting blend of the Pauline doctrine of the body of Christ with the Matthean identification of the Poor with Christ (Matt 25.31-46), so that the poor actually become the suffering body of Christ in the world. This raises nicely the question, which I think we have yet to think about seriously, of the theological and practical relationship between the church and the poor.

Thoughts?

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Excerpts From Herbert McCabe’s Catechism*

Here are a few excerpts from Herbert McCabe's Catechism, chosen either for their relevance or their inherent interest.

134 :: Why is the Church called the Church of the Poor?

The Church is called the Church of the Poor because Christ said that to the poor belongs the Kingdom, because she is dedicated to upholding the cause of the needy and the oppressed and because Christ promised that she would be hated by the wealthy and powerful of the world (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 1).

208 :: How do we usually exercise [the virtue of] charity towards others?

We usually exercise charity towards others by seeking their good and supplying their needs; by readily forgiving their offences; by mercy; by thinking and speaking of their good points; by helping them in temptation, sickness, ignorance or poverty; by seeking to enjoy their company.

221 :: What is an unjust society?

An unjust society is one in which some section of the community is systematically exploited in the interests of another wealthy and powerful section. Although we must use every means in our power to liberate such a society, we know that, because of original sin, any society will be in some respects unjust until the coming of the Kingdom.

231 :: How can we fail in the exercise of justice?

We fail in the exercise of justice by depriving others of their due or failing to defend them against an injustice: by murder, abortion, injury, including self-injury, torture, rape and adultery; by collusion with an oppressive and exploitative regime or with an unjust war; by indulging racism, sexism or religious bigotry; by avarice, by accumulating wealth and keeping it from the poor; by stealing or misusing the legitimate property of the community or individuals; by tax-evasion and inequitable forms of legal tax avoidance; by spreading deceptive propaganda or misleading advertising; by perjury and all forms of dishonest or sharp practice and by any form of co-operation with the injustice of others.

235 :: How do we exercise the virtue of courage?

We exercise the virtue of courage principally in energetic struggle on behalf of the poor and the weak and on every occasion when we have to face hostility and danger for the sake of the gospel.

241 :: How do we fail in the exercise of [the virtue of] temperateness in [the area of eating and drinking]?

We may fail by indifference to the enjoyments of the table; by eating and drinking that is totally divorced from either friendship or the requirements of health; by eating what is merely superficially attractive at the expense of a reasonable diet, by drug abuse and by all forms of gluttony and drunkenness.

253 :: How can we fail in the exercise of good sense [a.k.a. the virtue of prudence]?

We fail in good sense by the exercise of cunning to encompass bad ends as well as by foolishness while trying to do good; by all forms of unreasonableness, self-deception, bigotry, and prejudice; by pedantic legalism; by being doctrinaire; by voting ignorant, irresponsibly or merely selfishly; by careless incompetence in the management of domestic affairs and by leading a life without any conscious purpose or meaning.

260 :: How do we become detached from the things of this world so that we may be prepared for death?

We become detached from the things of this world by penance and mortification, especially by almsgiving and all forms of difficult works for others in need.

* Herbert McCabe, OP, The Teaching of the Catholic Church: A New Catechism of Christian Doctrine (London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, 2000).

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Closer to home

The rare acknowledgment of homelessness back home in MS, see here.

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Words from Dorothy Day

Inventory

This last year at St. Joseph's House of Hospitality we gave out, roughly speaking and underestimating it at that, 460,000 meals. Also 18,250 night's lodgings. This is what the world sees and if we wished to impress the world we would multiply this by eighteen years, and the figures would be truly impressive.

But suppose a mother should say, in a plea for sympathy, "I've put one thousand and ninety-five meals on the table this last year. I've washed fifty thousand plates."

It is easy to see how foolish it is to look at things in this light, in this big way. I am sure that God is not counting the meals. He is looking at Tony Aratari, Joe Monroe, Ray Taylor, turning off their alarm clocks at five every morning to go downstairs to start the coffee and cut the bread. They get no credit for being noble. They have no realization of dying to themselves, of giving up their lives. They are more often than not abused by friends and relatives for not getting jobs, using their education, "supporting themselves," instead of living on charity. "This then is perfect joy," St. Francis would say...

We all wish for recognition of one kind or another. But it is mass action people think of these days. They lose sight of the sacrament of the present moment-- of the little way.

Like Lord Jim in Conrad's story, we are all waiting for great opportunities to show heroism, letting countless opportunities go by to enlarge our hearts, increase our faith, and show our love for our fellows, and so for Him. As St. Paul says, it is by little and by little that we are saved-- or that we fall. We are living in this world and must make choices now, choices which may mean the sacrifice of our lives, in the future, but for now our goods, our reputations even. Our work is called futile, our stand of little worth or significance, having no influence, winning no converts, ineffective if not a form of treason. Or it is termed defeatism, appeasement, escapism.

What a paradox it is, this natural life and this supernatural life. We must give up our lives to gain them; we must die to live; we must be pruned to bear fruit. Ah yes, when we are being called appeasers, defeatists, we are being deprived of our dearest goods -- our reputation, honor, the esteem of men -- and we are truly on the way to becoming the despised of the earth. We are beginning perhaps to be truly poor.

We are trying to spread the gospel of peace, to persuade others to extend the peace movement, to build up a mighty army of conscientious objectors. And in doing this we are accounted fools, and it is the folly of the Cross in the eyes of an unbelieving world.

Martyrdom is not gallantly standing before a firing squad. Usually it is the losing of a job because of not taking a loyalty oath, or buying a war bond, or paying atax. Martyrdom is small, hidden, misunderstood. Or if it is a bloody martyrdom, it is the cry in the dark, the terror, the shame, the loneliness, nobody to hear, nobody to suffer with, let alone to save. Oh, the loneliness of all of us in these days, in all the great moments of our lives, this dying which we do, by little and by little, over a short space of time or over the years. One day is as a thousand in these crises. A week in jail is as a year.

But we repeat that we do see results from our personal experiences, and we proclaim our faith. Christ has died for us. Adam and Eve fell, and as Julian of Norwich wrote, the worst has already happened and been repaired. Christ continues to die in His martyrs all over the world, in His Mystical body, and it is this dying, not the killing in wars, which will save the world.

Do we see results, do these methods succeed? Can we trust in them? Just as surely as we believe in "the little way" of St. Therese, we believe and know that this is the only success.

-Dorothy Day, January 1951
[from Dorothy Day: Selected Writings, ed. Ellsberg]

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Stimulation by Simulation: The Problem of Simulating Homelessness

Stories abound in the news media concerning the "what it's like" to be homeless (look here for one example). Across the country we have seen, as the economy worsens, a growing trend toward community initiatives to introduce the well-off to the difficulties of poverty and homelessness by participating in a "night of homelessness" or a "poverty simulation". The intention is empathy and hopefully a resulting compassionate activism, a hope to stimulate change in society by simulating the "other". Let's step back for a moment and reflect on these initiatives to evaluate the message that they send.

For example, how is it exactly that we simulate homelessness?

Recent efforts seem to suggest that sleeping in a tent in a designated area overnight in a group of similarly socially conscious homeowners is a fitting simulation of homelessness (e.g., this one in Wisconsin). Or, to refer back to the previous example, participants get a taste of the difficulties of surviving in a low-income household "from week to week" by participating in an afternoon of 15min "weeks" in which each participant "household" is assigned specific tasks that must be completed (paying bills, caring for children, etc.).

The latter example is perhaps the most comical as, in its essentials, it packs poverty into a board game. Milton-Bradley would be proud. The "night of homelessness" is not much better in that participants take part in a socially recognized (and glorified) campout/sleepover in order to fathom the tribulations of homelessness.

A charitable reader might say, "How nice, all these agencies getting people involved and making us aware of the problems of poverty in our midst." Well, I suppose you're right. They are "making us aware" in some sense. But let's be honest: that experience is nothing like homelessness. One may as well "Shoot Hoops for the Homeless" on a community basketball court as camp out in a city park for as much "awareness" as it raises.

I'll go further. Maybe there is something dodgy even about the "awareness" that it raises. For example, the camp out to experience homelessness seems to suggest that homelessness is just the condition of not owning or renting a domicile. If this were really what homelessness were about, couldn't we solve that pretty easily? Simply putting the homeless into housing doesn't seem to solve the problem, so why do we simulate the condition by choosing the least difficult problem?

If you wanted to simulate homelessness, a much better proposition would seem to be to take on the role of a social and economic outcast for some length of time long enough to experience severe hunger, loneliness, exposure to the elements, and maybe a healthy dose of despair. In essence, outfit yourself to look homeless and then ask a friend to drop you in a strange and dangerous place with no money, ID, or other resources. And then survive. That might come close to a simulation. The one thing that cannot be simulated is the despair. Unless one were actually assaulted during the simulation it is hard to find that sense of helplessness and isolation that accompanies those without an advocate in the world.

That's what I suppose one should do in order to "simulate" homelessness. If you really want the simulation to give people an idea of "what it's like". It seems to me that the pain of poverty and homelessness is the isolation, not sleeping outdoors. The "awareness" that these silly programs seem to generate is a self-righteous paternalism that demands that we "do something to help these people".

What if "awareness" started not with identifying with homelessness, but identifying with a homeless person? Forgive the subtlety. What if instead of trying to understand a condition, we tried to understand just one person. What if "awareness" was actually seeing the homeless as people worthy of individual attention instead of a herd deserving institutional aid.

Unfortunately, I don't have a program to suggest as an alternative to those listed here. The answer is just as banal as recognizing a homeless person as a person, and being willing to get to know him/her.

Quit the simulations. Just go meet the homeless. They'll tell you what it's like.

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Deny Your Self

"The 'self' is pure illusion, and ultimately he who lives for and by such an illusion must end either in disgust or madness."

-Thomas Merton

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Bishop Weston

An old Anglican bishop, Frank Weston, addressed the Anglo-Catholic congress of 1923 with these words:

...the one great thing that England needs to learn is that Christ is found in and amid matter - Spirit through matter - God in flesh, God in the Sacrament. But I say to you...that if you are prepared to fight for the right of adoring Jesus in his Blessed Sacrament, then you have got to come out from before your Tabernacle and walk, with Christ mystically present in you, out into the streets of this country and find the same Jesus in the people of your cities and villages. You cannot worship Jesus in the Tabernacle if you do not pity Jesus in the slum...And it is folly, madness, to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacrament and Jesus on the throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of children...Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, and in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourself with his towel and try to wash his feet.

Cited in Kenneth Leech, The Social God, pp. 9-10.

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Mother Knows Best

There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world
than for bread.

Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.

Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole world. 

Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can
be no more hurt, only more love.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong
to each other.

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.

Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven
will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love 
God better because of them.

We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the
ungrateful.

-Bl. Teresa of Calcutta

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Another hymn

Because they're just so good, here's another from Chuck Wesley:

Which of the Christians now
would their possessions sell?
The fact you scarce allow,
the truth incredible:
that saints of old so weak should prove
and as themselves their neighbor love.

Of your abundant store
you may few relieve,
but all to feed the poor
you cannot, cannot give,
houses and lands for Christ forego,
or live as Jesus lived below.


Jesus, thy church inspire
with apostolic love,
infuse the one desire
to store our wealth above,
with earthly goods freely to part,
and joyfully sell all in heart.

With thy pure Spirit filled,
and loving thee alone,
we shall our substance yield,
call nothing here our own,
whate'er we have or are submit
and lie, as beggars, at they feet.

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Martyr? Where? Who let that happen?

Have a look at this news story hitting the mainstream media at CNN.com about security at church services.

Here's a link to the new business of Church Security.

How long is it until someone is mistaken for a terrorist at the altar call?

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In the News...

In this week's Independent Weekly:

The faces of homelessness: It can happen to anyone

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Incarnational Ministry

"Whatever you do in the flesh, these things are spiritual, for you do everything in Jesus Christ."

- St. Ignatius to the Ephesians

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The other view...

A view of our obligation to the poor from a contemporary Wesleyan site (contrast this with the hymn by Charles Wesley):

Wesleyan theology is interested in the Bible's plain and literal sense. But it does not stop there. It is interested that that plain and literal sense be interpreted in the light of Scripture as a whole: in the light of Scripture's bottom-line teachings; and in the light of its meaning for us, but only after allowances are made for the differences between Bible times and our own. If Scripture tells us, for example, that our religion is invalid (as in James) if we do not help the poor right on the spot, we realize that the times were different then than now, and that we might or might not now help just any and every needy person we see. Our Christian practice of mercy toward the needy now has governmental implementation, and we help the needy, in many countries, by paying our taxes, and permitting the needy to appeal for help to appropriate governmental agencies. We also contribute annually to the United Fund and other charities, helping the needy in those concerted ways. Through taxes and giving to charities, we help the needy. And we think this is an improvement upon the way it was done in century one of our era: through giving to a beggar on a street corner. We do some transposing, therefore, of the meaning of the biblical injunctions to give to needy individuals we meet. We might or might not shell out to the rare (in America) street-corner beggar, and still, no doubt, by taxes and giving to charities, share our funds with those in economic need.

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Why I'm Not Voting

The first thing to say is that I’m not thought-out on this issue. I don’t know exactly why I’ve chosen not to vote. But I do have some idea, and I’m actively working on understanding my action better. In this I comfort myself with the fact that I have more reasons not to vote than the average voter has for voting.



Next, I stand among many, many people who choose not to vote. My primary inspirations have been the many abstainers in the Catholic Worker tradition (see Autobiography of a Christian Anarchist by Ammon Hennacy) and the German and Dutch Anabaptists of the so-called radical reformation – the Mennonites and the Amish. But there is also a large amount of non-Christian literature on the topic (see http://www.strike-the-root.com/vote.html), most of which I have not read, but which represents another throng of abstainers (Tolstoy, Thoreau, inter alia) from various points of view.

But why am I not voting?

I am a Christian personalist. This is to say that I am Christian who tries to embody the Sermon on the Mount and the call to see every person as Christ in view of the fact that Matthew 25 says that what we do to the least of our sisters and brothers we do to him, and what we don’t do to the least of them we don’t do to him. This was the driving theology behind the work of Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, and it continues to animate the Missionaries of Charity and the Catholic Workers today. This “personalism” means that I must see in every person “Christ in his distressing disguise,” and I must receive and interact with that person as though she were Christ. And I must extend to the disguised Jesus all of the practices outlined in the Sermon on the Mount. On this, says Jesus in Matthew 25, my salvation depends.

This personalism (and simply my experience) tells me that the only way that people are changed and transformed, as well as nourished, is by real relationships of mutual vulnerability where material, emotional, and intellectual gifts are freely given and freely received, often at great personal cost. The practices of this self-sacrificial, forgiving community (even if its just between two people) are the only context it makes sense to use the word “love”. This sort of vulnerable community is therefore what everyone needs. I guess its goofy, but I’m saying its true that what people, from Hitler to St. Francis need, and what the gospel calls Christians to, is love (defined this way). All change and human transformation depends on it, though paradoxically we cannot have a goal in real relationship other than the friendship itself (i.e., I am not talking about counseling, since there is no mutuality in that.).

This means, I think, that I am committed to a sort of Christian anarchy. I cannot accept or support (by vote) the way that the state and institutions deal with people because they do not deal with them as Christ. They do not see him in his distressing disguise. They see a means to an end. The end is some version of the greatest happiness/ prosperity for the greatest number of people. Concrete the homeless man is not Christ whom I should take into my home and get to know, open up to and eat with. He is a person who has certain needs to be filled so that I don’t have to deal with him anymore, at least not in the state he is in. The state deals with everyone impersonally, as a number, as a project to finish. War is of course the greatest example of this. It so utterly denies Christ in the other, the other becomes so depersonalized, that they become a means to some greater end and hence expendable to that end. The growing world corporation-state is of course just a war with money (which is the most impersonal abstraction), and in practice it cannot be separated from the literal wars our nations fight for money.

But this personalism commits me not just to pacifism and anti-consumerism/capitalism, but also it does not allow me to endorse even a police state or penal system. So Ralph Nader might appear a good candidate for me because he favors retraction of all US overseas military personnel, and crackdowns on corporations. But he still is not going to treat the criminal as Christ. He is not going to forgive the murderer, but punish him. The police state and penal system does not open up forgiveness and true gift-exchange as the solution to sin, and it does not see the lack of the former as the solution to, and the reason for, the latter.

So, Colin, you really want child molesters running around and terrorists blowing us up? First, this Christian personalism entails that safety is a non-issue. Christian perfection is achieved in martyrdom, not in living a long life of comfort. Second, this is the only way to really make the world safe: when those of us who have love are willing to enter into relationships with those who do not, and are maybe even willing to see thereby that we lack something (or many things) that they have. Only then will we all be remade. Concentrating the need for love in prisons and shelters will not work. Opening our houses and lives to prisoners, strangers, and enemies will make them our friends.

Of course, this is hopelessly idealistic. But it is the way of Jesus. I don’t think that I am called to make the world a more nearly just place if thereby I am unable to follow what Jesus says. He tells me to live seeing everyone as him, and not to tell other people to do otherwise, and so I cannot vote for any candidate on offer. As Hennacy says, to vote is to lift your neighbors arm to strike the other, and thus to deny the Sermon on the Mount. Voting is always coercing another's action without any relational resources in place.

Further, I don’t think I can support the lesser of two evils (say, Obama), and then later, when he tells me to shop, or go to war, or testify against Jesus in his distressing disguise, dissent from those very practices I voted for. I cannot vote for Obama and then be a conscientious objector. There is no integrity in that.

Of course, this position will make no sense to utilitarian calculus. It may or may not secure the more nearly just world. But it may: we simply will never know because we will never try. My action does not seek to be effective, it seeks to be faithful.

I am of course, hopelessly compromised. I pay taxes. I drive a car from time to time. I get a pay check from Duke University that gets its money from investing in multi-national corporations. My wife works for the City of Durham for crying out loud. And in a million other ways I contribute to the system that I stand against. I don’t always have patience for the homeless, I don’t always give the time and money and emotional gifts that I could. It is this stuff, if anything that would commit me to voting.

But I am trying to progress along the road of virtue. I confess these sins to my priest. I am trying to get to a life of voluntary poverty that would take care of a number of these compromised practices. I am trying to spend some time in real relationships with the poor. And I am looking to the Saints to figure out what to do next. I am trying to be faithful.

That is why I’m not voting.

C

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A Hymn

[I like verse 3 particularly]

1. The poor as Jesus' bosom-friends,
the poor he makes his latest care,
to all his followers commends,
and wills us on our hands to bear;
the poor our dearest care we make,
and love them for our Saviour's sake.


2. Whate'er thou dost to us entrust,
with thy peculiar blessing blessed,
O make us diligent and just,
as stewards faithful to the least,
endowed with wisdom to possess
the mammon of unrighteousness.

3. Help us to make the poor our friends,
by that which paves the way to hell,
that when our loving labor ends,
and dying from this earth we fail,
our friends may greet us in the skies
born to a life that never dies.

-Charles Wesley

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Ignatius to Polycarp

"You are flesh and spirit in order to deal gently with whomever is before you."

"After the Lord, widows must be [the Bishop's] first concern."

- Letter of Ignatius to Polycarp

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Chrysostom on Hospitality

Here are a few paragraphs about Chrysostom's views on Christian hospitality and the relationship between the work of the church and the work of individuals in the diocese (from Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition)...

"In the writings of John Chrysostom, from the fourth and early fifth centuries, we can identify multiple settings for hospitality as well as the tensions that emerged out of such diversity. Chrysostom's parsishioners seem to have excused themselves from the demands of hospitality by noting that the church had the means to provide hospitality to strangers. He insisted, however, that hospitality remained a personal, individual responsibility as well. even if the needy person could be fed from common funds, Chrysostom asked, 'Can that benefit you? If another man prays, does it follow that you are not bound to pray?' He urged his parishioners to make a guest chamber in their own houses, a place set apart for Christ -- a place within which to welcome 'the maimed, the beggars, and the homeless.' Recognizing that some Christians would hesitate to take strangers into their homes, Chrysostom suggested that they could at least make a place in their household for a local person who was known to them.

It was very important to him that hospitality be offered personally, with one's own hands, not left exclusively for the church to provide. This emphasis seems to have emerged from several concerns. Hospitality was an essential part of Christian identity. Welcome, compassion, and equal treatment were all part of a proper Christian response to peoploe in need. Personal hospitality broke down some of the social barriers that were so powerful in the culture. Chrysostom's emphasis also derived from a need to counteract the increasing reliance on the newly formed specialized institutions of hospitality.

Chrysostom himself had an important role in developing these differentiated institutions of care. In Homily 66 on Matthew, he described the work of the church at Antioch. Though not wealthy, the church cared for three thousand widows and virgins daily, and, in addition, cared for thos in prison, sick, and disabled, and those away from their homes. THe church also provided food and clothing to those who came 'causally' everyday. From 400 to 403, Chrysostom built a number of hospitals in Constantinople. These provided care for strangers and orphans, as well as for those who were sick, chronic invalids, old, poor, and destitute."

[pages 45-46; footnotes omitted]

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Remembering and Expecting Saints

"It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another, and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are. A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead - often not fully recognizing what they were doing - was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained...If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point .What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us...We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another - doubtless very different - St. Benedict." - Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue.

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